Another Irishman here, completely agree with your comment. My domestic gas and electric bills have never been higher, insane inflation for nothing more than political virtue signalling.
The only part of your bills that could be regarded as virtue signalling is the carbon tax, which is driven by government regulation. The vast increases in energy costs were driven firstly by Russia (when they invaded Ukraine) and the US (when they attacked Iran).
And this hits me too, I have (unfortunately) oil heating which has gone from about 500 to 800 over the course of the last week. Fortunately we filled up last month, but it's really worrying.
Ultimately though, the only way to fix this is to build a lot of wind (industrial scale) and solar (residential scale) as otherwise we're at the mercy of world events.
Being dependent on gas is equal to being exposed to global shocks, unless you can cover your domestic needs purely with domestic gas extraction.
Again, our poor decision making around national infrastructure is on our governments. They left have left us completely exposed to international markets.
As usual with the Greens, perfection was the enemy of the good.
"My energy prices are high" because you are getting outbid. You can't stop getting outbid by building more transport infrastructure. That terminal will go unused.
This is a weird way to justify using LNG brought in through Britain.
And they're often disingenously included in fossil fuel pricing to claim that green energy is fundamentally cheaper.
I believe in climate change, and I believe in doing something about it. But being disingenous with the public is only going to create resentment and resistance to Net Zero.
There’s nothing unreasonable about this: fossil fuels have huge costs associated with them that are invisible to the consumer. They’ve just been getting pushed off onto other people forever.
But don't expect me to take you seriously when you directly compare a raw price of renewable energy with an uplifted price of fossil fuels.
Especially when your quoted price for renewable energy ignores the cost of grid upgrades, storage infrastructure, and externalities associated with mining materials to manufactur solar panels and wind turbines etc (as happened recently in UK parliament when the energy minister did a very dubious comparison between energy prices)
Solar panels can be recycled, so eventually they will need very little mining.
Have you ever recycled gasoline? Have you ever heard of the Deepwater Horizon?
I think you're being disingenuous while accusing others.
I'd add that this is only part of the equation because: what do you do on an overcast day with no wind?
You need significant storage capacity before you can become isolated from world events. Until then, you need power generation that you can bring online on short notice: coal, gas, hydro, etc. Traditionally, gas was used for this because it's easy to store, quick to get going and gas plants can also burn coal if needed.
Unfortunately, the nice properties of gas (easy to store and transport) mean that it's a global commodity. It will go where they pay the most, which means that far away events can cause a price in gas prices globally.
Battery technology is really, really getting there.
And in the absence of any more improvements here (unlikely) you integrate your grids with other countries. That's harder for Ireland, but it's still worth doing.
The sheer number of people in this thread saying, "we need renewables to be independent!", from countries that don't actually manufacture anything, is astonishing.
Also all these economies do make stuff, they just don't employ huge numbers of semi-skilled workers to do so. Most of the factory jobs are gone, but the factories are not. I live in a port city, about a century ago this city had loads of jobs crewing ships and loading cargo but today more work is done by a tiny fraction as many people.
Coal or gas on the other hand...anyone can cut off Ireland anytime.